Images today are often stored, manipulated, and transmitted in electronic format. Especially with regard to the storage and transmission of images, the size of the data for an electronic image continues to be important. Generally, the smaller the size of an electronic image, the easier it is to store or transmit. The size of the data for an electronic image may be reduced by compressing the data. Unfortunately, appreciable compression is often lossy, which means that information is lost during a compression and decompression cycle. This lost information results in the visual quality of the image being degraded after the decompression.
In other words, although higher compression facilitates the storage and transmission of an image, such compression usually degrades the resulting visual quality of the electronic image after decompression. Consequently, a balance is typically struck between an implemented compression ratio and good visual quality. One way to improve this balance is to improve the compression algorithm that is applied to the electronic image. If the compression algorithm is improved, a higher compression ratio can be attained without sacrificing visual quality. A novel and superior compression algorithm that is particularly applicable to images having textual portions is described herein below.